Chapter 25
25
“What?”
“I’m answering your question,” Evie whispers. She lets out a shaky exhale as she pulls away and wraps her arms around her knees to soothe the stomach stabbies that have come and gone all week, that refuse to subside. Fuck . She needs them to subside. Needs this minor flare-up to not become a full-blown flare-up. Needs Theo . “I don’t want to be with you.”
Theo covers her knee with his hand, so gentle it hurts. “I love you.”
“You won’t change my mind about marriage.”
“Noted.” He presses his lips against her forehead. “I love you.”
“I can’t leave Dr. Griffith.”
His expression softens, then shifts into something so hopeful that Evie immediately knows she’s said the wrong thing. “ Ev . Dr. G loves you, too. I’m sure she’ll refer you to the best. We can figure that out first. Choose a neighborhood depending on where the best GI doctor in New York City is based.”
“No.” She digs her nails into her knees and inhales. “I don’t want to leave Dr. G. Or any of my doctors. It isn’t just doctors… it’s finding a new infusion center, deciphering new state insurance laws, convincing new phlebotomists that I know where my best veins are and to please use the 25G needle, so I’m not covered in bruises from a bad draw. I know it’s invisible, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that I’m sick but—”
“Is that what you think?”
Theo looks wounded. Theo, who keeps their kitchen stocked with her favorite foods. Who will carry her around Disneyland based on one super specific eyebrow twitch. Who knows her medication and supplement dosages and when she’s running low on something. Who would be at every infusion if they weren’t on school days. It’s easy to forget that I’m sick. It’s an unfair accusation and Evie knows it. But. She will not be the reason Theo doesn’t accept his dream job.
He needs to go.
She needs to stay.
“No. But…” Evie presses on the wound, feeling eighteen all over again. “A move is a life-changing decision without an autoimmune disease and I’ve… well, I’ve been in remission since you moved home. You weren’t around when it was bad—”
“I would’ve been.” His voice is strained as he leans in, so close their foreheads touch. So close she dares to press her palm against his chest. “God, Evelyn. You know I would’ve been.”
“I know.”
It’s unintentional, this admission.
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
Theo says it so simply, makes it feel simple.
Staying.
Loving her.
“Theo.”
“I want to stay. I love you .” Theo attempts to wipe away her tears, cannot catch them fast enough. “Ev. Trust me. ”
And.
Well.
She does .
Evie Bloom trusts Theo Cohen with her whole heart. It’s not something she has the best record with. Trust. For the first eighteen years of her life, she trusted doctor after doctor who assured her that she was healthy. She trusted that Naomi’s beats would always be temporary. She trusted that Hanna understood that marriage was off the table and still loved her anyway.
Trusting Theo?
It scares the shit out of her because if— when —he breaks that trust?
It will break her.
“How can I?” Evie squeezes her eyes shut, knowing the perfect combination of words that will puncture, deepen the wound. “Theo. The last time I trusted you? You literally dropped me.”
Theo recoils.
All the air exits his lungs in an audible whoosh .
She may as well have slapped him.
“I’m sorry.” Instant regret buoys her toward him as soon as she sees the guilt that flashes across his face. It was a fucked-up thing to say, to insinuate that her injury was in any way his fault when she knows—she knows —that he still believes that. Evie pinches the bridge of her nose, her stomach gurgling. “I didn’t… I don’t know why I said that. I feel like shit. Can we just talk in the morning? Take a beat?”
Theo stands, expression blank.
“Okay, Naomi.”
It’s Evie who recoils now. “Fuck you.”
“What? Is this not what Naomi did to you? Shut down and disappeared when shit got hard or complicated or real or—”
“ Theo .” She cuts him off, her nostrils flaring. She only lobbed words that hurt, pushed him away, because she loves him and if he’s going to get everything he wants, he needs to let her go… and he’s retaliating with the most painful combination of words to hurt and she is already in so much pain. “I can’t do this.”
“Ev—”
“Get. The fuck. Out .”
Theo raises his arms in resignation. “Okay.” Then he drags a hand across his face, so exhausted, so sad, so done as he backs toward the door. “But, Ev? You can’t blame people for leaving when you’re the one shoving them out the goddamn door.”
Their marriage was always going to end in a no-fault divorce. It’s what Evie wants. In the days after their fallout, she takes antinausea medication every night before bed. It’s what she wants. Watches Love Island alone. It’s what she wants. Works overtime. Pushes her body beyond its limits, so she crashes as soon as she gets home. It’s what she wants.
Currently, is dedicating an entire therapy session to this assertion. “It’s what I want.”
“You keep saying that.” Jules nods, a floating head on Evie’s computer screen. “So. What’s keeping you in Pasadena?”
“Work.”
“Valid.”
“Phoebe.” Jules’s eyebrows rise, prompting Evie to elaborate. “My car.”
“Ah.”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I’d need a new Jules if I moved to New York, wouldn’t I?”
“You would.”
“ Fuck that.”
Jules’s mouth quirks, but then their expression softens. “Evie. Is the idea of building trust with new providers maybe, possibly, triggering some medical trauma stuff for you?”
Evie shrugs.
Rips a hangnail.
Bleeds.
“Maybe,” she concedes. “I don’t know if I have it in me to start over? I think about it and get so overwhelmed and I just… can’t. How am I supposed to let go of the first doctors who saw my pain and believed me?”
“I understand that.” Jules has ulcerative colitis, so this isn’t some false platitude—a huge reason that she trusts Jules is because they do understand health stuff. “Navigating the healthcare system while chronically ill is the worst .” They take notes. Evie fixates on the click s of the keyboard, continuing to pick the skin around her nails as they type. “Did you talk about this with Theo?”
“I did.”
“What did he say?”
“ I’ll stay . As if it’s that simple!”
Jules blinks. “Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I think, for me…” Evie has moved on to fidgeting with the hair elastic on her wrist after adequately destroying the skin around her thumb as she attempts to articulate what she means, looking everywhere but at Jules. “If I had another chance to dance? I would take it. Without hesitation. I wouldn’t choose him. So. I can’t let him choose me .”
“His decision isn’t yours to make.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes! I just don’t want to be a factor in his decision.”
“Why not?”
Shit, Jules! Why didn’t Evie stick to health stuff, social anxiety, Naomi? Seriously, there’s nothing her therapist enjoys more than validating Evie’s Naomi fucked me up feelings, then sending her links to books written for children with emotionally immature parents. She should pivot to one of these comfortable topics. Instead, she flails in extended silence that makes her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Because it can’t be on me,” she begins, finally. “When he regrets it.”
Jules nods. “So. His decision isn’t yours to make… but the consequences are on you?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’ll regret staying?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a bold assumption.”
“Is it?”
“Is it bold of you to think you know someone better than they know themselves? Yes.” Jules blows a raspberry and runs their hand through their longer-on-top pixie cut. “It’s also unfair to the other person in the equation… and, speaking from personal experience, super fucking annoying.”
“Jules!”
“Evie.” Jules’s voice is softer, a normal volume. “Children of people with the traits of a personality disorder—”
Evie cuts them off. “This is not about Naomi.”
“Okay.”
“Not everything is about Naomi.”
“True.” Jules shrugs. “But you did grow up anticipating her needs, managing her emotions in order to protect yourself, downplaying your pain…”
Evie can hear the ellipsis at the end of Jules’s sentence and knows where she’s being led, what conclusion she’s meant to come to. Is that not what this is? No. Is she not anticipating Theo will resent her if he stays? No. Is she pushing him toward New York now (again!) because obviously, eventually, he’ll leave anyway? No.
No.
No?
Exhausted, her eyes shift to the bottom right-hand corner of her screen: 11:59. Evie’s never been more relieved to tap out of a session. She snaps and points finger guns at Jules. “I’ll totally spend the next week unpacking that!”
Jules snorts. “You will not.”
“I will not.”
Evie closes her laptop and flops backward onto her bed, somehow feeling worse than she did an hour ago. She’s been unpacking this shit with Jules for five years. She knows who her mother is. Has worked so hard not to become—or exist as a reaction to—Naomi.
Okay, Naomi.
The casual cruelty of those two words rattles against her skull.
She didn’t mention them to Jules.
Because this isn’t about Naomi.
Evie stands. Stretches her limbs before exiting her room. Theo is in the kitchen, slicing an avocado like he’s not supposed to be in school. Her stomach is on the floor. It’s Monday. And… Theo’s on spring break this week. She completely forgot and just, like, therapied about him for an entire hour.
“ Fuck .” She passes him on her way to the fridge, unsure what she even wants. “Were you listening?”
“Thin walls.”
He doesn’t even deny it.
Evie closes the fridge, indecisive and empty-handed. “I have to go to work.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
His eyes meet hers. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” she lies.
Because it would be unbearable to sit here and let him prepare a meal for her, she swipes her keys off the counter and reaches for the doorknob.
“Ev,” Theo says, and that one syllable, her name, is a strained exhale. It stills her, but she doesn’t dare turn toward his voice, doesn’t dare turn toward him. “I have to make a decision by the end of the week.”
God.
He’s so stubborn.
“Theodore—”
“I think I’m going to take it.”
Oh.
“Obviously you’re taking it.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. Braces for Theo to push back. He doesn’t. So. She’s gone, so ready to get out of here, to get to the studio where she can turn off her brain. It doesn’t register until she’s on the freeway that she’s still in her pajamas, so she reroutes to the nearest department store, and the tears that stream down her cheeks as she’s thumbing through athleisure are happy tears because Theo is accepting the job. His dream job. In New York.
It’s fine.
She’s fine .
It’s what she wants.